A change of scenery

It’s been quiet here as I’ve been moving the Lawnchair all over the place since the summer and haven’t had time to write. Bittersweetly no longer in Kazakhstan, I’ve just joined the Anthropology Department at Vassar College in New York. Here’s a quick, summery summary of one of the last things I did as an immigrant in Central Asia.

Site search: No end in sight

The yellow pin marks the location of our survey. This is very close to the Polygon, a nuclear test site used during Soviet times.

In early June some colleagues and I ventured to East Kazakhstan in search of caves that earlier humans might have called home. Our initial plan was to visit the Altai Mountains, but permits fell through at the last minute. Fortunately, Bronze Age archaeologists from Eurasian National University and University of Semipalatinsk told us of some caves near where they were working in the Shyngystau region, and let us set up camp with them.

Abutting Bronze Age burial mounds and just a small hike to a large recent cemetery, the campsite was flanked by thousands of years of burial practices. Would the nearby caves push this boundary into the Stone Age?

Looking south from the previously pictured caves. Trees mark the course of a braided stream, and in the distance you can barely make out the mausoleum-filled cemetery. Camp is just off-camera to the right.

We found and explored a number of shallow caves in the area, but unfortunately none of these were productive Paleolithic sites. This rocky uplift (below), for instance, was adjacent to a meandering stream that probably gets pretty deep during flood season. The water had carved out one small cave (bottom right), and there was a larger, south-facing cave just above ground level.

The larger cave funneled into an enticingly narrow crawlspace. On the principle of “if you don’t look, you’ll never know,” and inspired by the geological situation of Homo naledi, we figured it was worth at least looking.

WRONG! It ended when I was only a little over a body length in. But again, if you don’t look, you’ll never know. What you will come to know, however, is how many and what size of spiders are in cave; the result is always upsetting.

While the trip didn’t go exactly as planned, it was still highly informative to see more of the geology of East Kazakhstan. Fortunately, we have received funding from the Growth Development and Research Institute of Nazarbayev University, to begin survey of the Bukhtarma River Valley as we’d initially intended. Hopefully next summer we’ll see more caves, exciting finds, and fewer spiders.